Q&A with PwC’s Peter Clarke

Peter Clarke is a Practice Leader for PwC Global
Mobility Services. He sat down with ALM
Intelligence’s Matt Merker, Senior Analyst, Lead
for Benefits Consulting Research, to discuss the
firm’s global mobility practice.

: Can you tell usabout PwC’s global mobility practice?

Clarke: PwC’s HR consulting capabilities are organized under one unified, global brand: People and Organization—a single global business
bringing together over 10,000 people
across 141 countries. Global mobility
is one of the four pillars that make up
the People and Organization practice.
Our global mobility network of more
than 7,500 mobility specialists helps
companies manage the complex operational and strategic aspects of deploying an international workforce. Today,
I’m proud to say we are serving more
than 330,000 mobile employees from
nearly 4,000 companies. We collaborate with clients of all sizes and maturity to develop a mobility strategy that
addresses all aspects of their mobility
program, including tax, immigration,
Social Security, policy and process
design, payroll reporting and global
compensation collection, governance
and mobility technology.

: What challengesare your clients facing in this space,and how have these changed?

Clarke: Mobility demographics haveshifted significantly over the last fewyears. As the future of work evolves,so does the nature of talent mobility, infundamental ways. Most of the growthin talent mobility is coming not fromtraditional expatriates, but from a vari-ety of new mobility types—commut-ers, business travelers, virtual assign-ments, etc. The need for employeesto work in a global context, beyondcountry boundaries, is key to the wayto our clients operate. However, thesenew mobility types make companiesvulnerable to income tax, immigra-tion, social security, and scrutiny fromcorporate tax authorities. This meansthat companies are expected to haveprocesses, policies, and technologyin place to ensure they know whereemployees are, what they are doing,and that reporting requirements aremet. Ultimately, it’s about helping ourclients keep both compliant and agilein a time with changing mobility pat-terns and digital disruption.

: Which regions aremost challenging for mobility?Why?

Clarke: Expansion into new markets
creates a good number of mobility challenges, simply because many of the targeted markets are unfamiliar and difficult to enter. Participants in our recent
Modern Mobility study told us that tax
and immigration compliance are the
main challenges to moving employees, with security considerations and
pension benefits also frequently cited.
Participants also said they have found
most challenging locations to move
people to be Africa and Asia Pacific.
Everyone wants a position in London,
New York or Sydney. More than 70
percent of millennials in a 2011 PwC
survey said they would like to work
abroad, making this one of the most
important attributes for a graduate
employer. The problem is that many of
the markets businesses are likely to be
targeting fare low down the list of the
millennials’ favored destinations.

: How has digi-tal innovation impacted your globalmobility consulting practice?Clarke: Digital innovation plays a crit-ical role in how we service our clients.In an ecosystem as complex and frag-mented as global mobility, use of inno-vative technology is essential to driveefficiency, minimize risk, and facili-tate a smooth experience for both theemployee and HR user. We continue tobe hyper focused on innovating and areinvesting heavily in our digital com-pliance model. One key area we arefocusing resources is in harnessing thefull power of our data using machinelearning capabilities. The very natureof machine learning allows us to makeeven more accurate predictions onwhere people may travel in the futureand to predict if an employee will havea successful mobility experience.

: What are sometrends for employee global mobility?Clarke: No doubt, technology willcontinue to change the way we inter-act and do work. In fact, virtual andaugmented reality will significantlyincrease the quality of our communi-cations within the work environment.However, we believe this will not resultin a corresponding reduction in theglobal mobility of the workforce. Why?Because millennials value experiencesover everything else. Perhaps more sothan any other generation of workers,millennials value the non-monetaryaspects of the experiences more thancompensation, giving rise to whateconomists are calling the “experienceeconomy”. Thus, organizations thatcan offer a frictionless mobility experi-ence that allows employees to work inSan Jose, Shanghai or Stockholm willhave an advantage in the war for talent.This is the future of global mobility.